A peculiarly awful book set in Belgium a few years ago, in a town near the Drielandenpunt where a new local doctor moves in with his triplet sons and a sinister unspoken history of discredited scientific experimentation. I thought that the book was trying to navigate the fuzzy boundary between mainstream Belgian literature and horror, and frankly got lost en route, going for shock rather than substance. I got it because I'm always on the lookout for books about Belgium that have made a minor hit in English, but this wasn't worth it.

This was both the top unread non-genre fiction book on my shelf, and the top unread book acquired in 2014. Next on those lists respectively are Caprice and Rondo, by Dorothy Dunnett, and Corum, by Michael Moorcock.